DIARY
OF A
ROCKSTAR

Is out today… and i’m NOT playing it.

My god damn PS3 is fucked. seriously.. i dont know what the hell is going on, but its giving me some stupid error code, the game wont even load on the machine.

I pre ordered the game 2 weeks ago, I was patient, I waited all day long to get home to play it.. I get home, put the game in, start loading it… and the PS3 crashes..

BULL SHIT.

Now I might have to send my PS3 back to Sony to get a replacement… Better yet, if I cant find the reciept, I’ll have to pay $150!!!!!!!!

GAHHHHHH!!!

Wow, i’m gonna be friggen 25 in 2 days… Its not really freaking me out so much as i’m suprised as to how it has snuck up on me…. It feels like last year I had just finished college, and started working..

Definitely the band has kept me focused, which has probably helped to keep my eye on the “time”.

Either way, i’m really excited for the weekend, I’m having a party at my house on Saturday night, i’ve got a bunch of people coming over for some drinks, as well as my housemates are having a bunch of their friends over… Its kind of going to be a “Start of summer/My B day” party.

Excitement!

Since December, when I had to sell my little practice Fender Champ guitar amp before leaving for Vancouver to record our album, I have been without a practice guitar amp at home, which has made me very sad…

I finally found a great deal on Craigslist in this little Fender Pro Jr Blonde model… If you know anything about these amps, you know that they’re pretty wicked little bang for your buck amps.. This one came with a Jensen speaker, but stock tubes (I think i’m gonna upgrade them)..

Anyway, heres a photo!

I had pretty much the best weekend i’ve had in a LONNNG time this past weekend… Thanks to Ashley who came to visit me from Windsor, we hung out, had food and drinks at some of my favorite places, and also, this weekend was such an amazing weekend for weather. T-shirt weather has definately been a long time coming, and now its here, and I couldn’t be more extatic.

I’m really digging the thought of the 9-5, Mon-Fri work week, I never really got it until now, as i’ve been working as a freelance designer for so long, and my schedule has always been “work whenever you can” kind of thing. I’ve been settling into this regular work day/week, and completely shutting my brain off from work while i’m away, which has been doing wonders for me.. I feel less stressed, and another thing, i’ve started to loose the feeling of always being on call for work.

Other good news, I launched my first project at the new job last week. Its called “The Boomer File”. Its a video blog for baby boomers. You can find the site at http://www.boomerfile.tv. Please check it out, bookmark it, put it in your feed reader, and comment on an entry.

I’ve been trying to come up with a full review of our trip that ended a little over a week ago now, but it just hasn’t happened… I thought that seeing the aftereffects of what happened would help, but no such luck, so i’m just gonna try and push my way through this summerizing it all.

For me, the trip was great. We obviously had a bunch of horrible bad luck… most of which, i realize is self inflicted, weather we want to admit it or not. Dispite that, we were overly successful.

I’ve been on tour in the UK 4 times now, so I think that I can be a pretty good barometer for what our growth is. I’ve seen REALLY shitty shows, i’ve seen OK shows, and i’ve also seen GREAT shows…. The first time I travelled across the pond, we had high expectations, and I think that we were let down, however, I think we saw the potential that we had in that market. Our 2nd trip over there was a little better, we learned what we could do to build. And we did, so we saw the results. Our 3rd trip over there was kind of a set back, mainly becuase we weren’t travelling with the full main lineup that we had been used to playing with, we were also lacking on the promotion side of things.

This tour was different though… We’ve for the greater part, had been doing all tour promotions previously, btu this time, we were lucky enough to have some of the best promtions people working for us. And that alone was a huge deal… We saw lineups outside of clubs, sold out shows, and yes, some bad shows, however, in my opinion, the tour was an exponential success over the last 3 trips.

I absolutely love being in Europe, and this time was no different, and now i’ve been to 2 countries that I hadn’t been to previously (Ireland, and The Netherlands) I love it even more. I simply cant wait to go back!

Its been a few days since I last wrote, and for a very good reason.. I Cant remember exactly, but i’m pretty sure the last entry was about leaving Nottingham and going back into London, for our big London show, where a few key people were going to be seeing us… The night was an absolute success, we played well, had a great time, and impressed some key people who were there to see us. However, our bad luck streak in the city continued ….. just when we thought everything was going to be ok, it got worse.. We were going through our pre show sound check with the sound engineer at the Monto Water Rats venue in London, when a police officer came into the bar looking for us… Our van had been broken into just over 1 block away from the venue… Just our luck, the back window was smashed, and Jesse’s bag was taken out of the back.

Luckily, his passport wasn’t inside, however, he did loose a bunch of stuff including a lot of clothes, an ipod, a watch, his wallet, his birth certificate, and some other random items… Jesse just about had it. He was very close to throwing in the towel and going home the next day, but luckily, he decided to stick it out and come to Amsterdam with us for our last show.

Amsterdam was amazing. Right when we got off the plane, we all started feeling much better, mostly becuase of the sincere kindness that we were experiencing… A complete polar opposite from our entire UK experience (this time). Our first night in amsterdam was basically spent having a bit of food, then heading to bed, we were all beat from the day, and the flight over (we hadn’t slept the night before).

In Amsterdam, we played at a venue called Paradiso. The venue was beautiful. It was an old church, converted into a live music venue/dance club. There are 2 music rooms in the Paradiso, one was a 2000 capacity venue, where Kate Nash was playing the same night (Sold out) we were, our room was considerably smaller at 200 capacity, but equally as impressive… High ceilings, and beautiful decor.. We all agree that it is probably the most beautiful venue any of us had played at. The show was not our best, as we had numerous technical problems on stage: 1 broken snare drum half way through the set, and I broke a guitar string closer to the end of the set, which is very rare for me, as i’ve only ever broken 2 guitar strings on stage with Birds of Wales.

All in all, Amsterdam was a blessing, refreshing, and very enjoyable.. we even had time to drink a few Heineken’s to taste what its really supposto be like… I dont normally like Heinekin, but I guess something about the freshness of it when its served from the same city its brewed in, makes it more enjoyable.. fruity actually.

Stay tuned for my full tour overview in a day or two.